Re: Public Access Mandate Made Law
Wade KOTTER
>>> Ray English <Ray.E...@oberlin.edu> 12/26/07 2:46 PM >>>
Alliance for Taxpayer Access
www.taxpayeraccess.org
For immediate release
December 26, 2007
Contact:
Jennifer McLennan
jennifer [at] arl [dot] org
(202) 296-2296 ext. 121
PUBLIC ACCESS MANDATE MADE LAW
President Bush signs omnibus appropriations bill,
including National Institutes of Health research access provision
Washington, D.C. – December 26, 2007 – President Bush has signed into
law the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2007 (H.R. 2764), which
includes a provision directing the National Institutes of Health
(NIH) to provide the public with open online access to findings from
its funded research. This is the first time the U.S. government has
mandated public access to research funded by a major agency.
The provision directs the NIH to change its existing Public Access
Policy, implemented as a voluntary measure in 2005, so that
participation is required for agency-funded investigators.
Researchers will now be required to deposit electronic copies of
their peer-reviewed manuscripts into the National Library of
Medicine’s online archive, PubMed Central. Full texts of the articles
will be publicly available and searchable online in PubMed Central no
later than 12 months after publication in a journal.
"Facilitated access to new knowledge is key to the rapid advancement
of science," said Harold Varmus, president of the Memorial Sloan-
Kettering Cancer Center and Nobel Prize Winner. "The tremendous
benefits of broad, unfettered access to information are already clear
from the Human Genome Project, which has made its DNA sequences
immediately and freely available to all via the Internet. Providing
widespread access, even with a one-year delay, to the full text of
research articles supported by funds from all institutes at the NIH
will increase those benefits dramatically."
"Public access to publicly funded research contributes directly to
the mission of higher education,” said David Shulenburger, Vice
President for Academic Affairs at NASULGC (the National Association
of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges). “Improved access will
enable universities to maximize their own investment in research, and
widen the potential for discovery as the results are more readily
available for others to build upon.”
“Years of unrelenting commitment and dedication by patient groups and
our allies in the research community have at last borne fruit,” said
Sharon Terry, President and CEO of Genetic Alliance. “We’re proud of
Congress for their unrelenting commitment to ensuring the success of
public access to NIH-funded research. As patients, patient advocates,
and families, we look forward to having expanded access to the
research we need.”
“Congress has just unlocked the taxpayers’ $29 billion investment in
NIH,” said Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC (the Scholarly
Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, a founding member of the
ATA). “This policy will directly improve the sharing of scientific
findings, the pace of medical advances, and the rate of return on
benefits to the taxpayer."
Joseph added, “On behalf of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, I’d
like to thank everyone who worked so hard over the past several years
to bring about implementation of this much-needed policy.”
For more information, and a timeline detailing the evolution of the
NIH Public Access Policy beginning May 2004, visit the ATA Web site
at http://www.taxpayeraccess.org.
###
The Alliance for Taxpayer Access is a coalition of patient, academic,
research, and publishing organizations that supports open public
access to the results of federally funded research. The Alliance was
formed in 2004 to urge that peer-reviewed articles stemming from
taxpayer-funded research become fully accessible and available online
at no extra cost to the American public. DetaJennifer McLennan
Director of Communications
SPARC
(the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)
http://www.arl.org/sparc
(202) 296-2296 ext 121
jenn...@arl.org